Trevor: Meditation

by onacruse 27 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  bernadette

  Trevor

  What I am describing is not a mystical experience and has nothing to do with spirituality, belief or prayer. It is simply the understanding that being asleep or awake and thinking are not the only two gears the mind has.

  There are other of states of mind. Hypnosis shows how easily the thinking mind can be altered by digging a little below the surface. Thinking is a most important tool but it can also cause neurosis and other anxiety problems when a person has not learned to control the intensity of the thought process.

  I can identify with the above - its simple straightforward and works.

  As a dub I stumbled across what you have described via Alexander Technique. It taught me to adopt a neutral frame of mind of non -doing and non thinking. This state was acceptable to me as a witness and very helpful to go into for about 15-20 minutes a day. For me it was more calming than prayer - I'd feel stable and happy once again. Able to face the world. I still use it - it has become a part of my life.
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  bernadette

  Glad you raised the topic onacruse - cos it seems to me that 'meditation' can take many forms when described in words but in experience it not like that - but it seems there are stages. But even the simplest most straightforward form it is beneficial.
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  onacruse

  Trevor, thanks for your understanding. As I reflected a bit more about why I felt so prompted to start this thread, it just dawned on me: There was a poster here (Introspection), who I talked with several times, about the same issue...and, ya know, he would try and try and try to explain it to me, so eloquently and so calmly, and after every conversation, however much I genuinely enjoyed them, I'd put down the phone and say to myself: "Geez, I didn't understand a word he said!" LOL

  And, to be honest, I really can't deny the possibility that I might simply have a residual (invisible?) mental block against such things, having been raised as a JW.
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  trevor

  Onacruse

  From your comments on this thread and the other thread you started it does seem that you are having a difficult time at the moment and you have been given some good advise by other posters.

  Most of our anxiety and frustration is caused by the activity of our minds, and our emotional resistance to our circumstances. Having accepted our circumstances and acknowledged a need to make changes, the mind has to be used in a constructive way.

  It is not enough to allow a succession of vaguely connected thoughts of a negative nature to flow through our mind. The fact that our mind may be full of thoughts does not mean we are thinking. Before we can move from random thought to constructive thought the mind has to change direction. To do this it has to stop.

  Meditation is not about doing something, it is about developing the ability to stop doing something.

  It is like a child running around a room shouting and crying and working himself up into a state. Before he can use his mind constructively he has to Stop - sit down and be Silent for a moment. Meditation is that moment. It is like a quiet voice that says to the child, ‘thats enough.’ Children will not stop that easily and neither will our minds. It takes practise.

  I hope you find a way forward and learn to enjoy the peace that is within your grasp.

  trevor
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  onacruse

  Trevor:

  Meditation is not about doing something, it is about developing the ability to stop doing something.

  I think it's kid-A who has posted a fair bit about what I'm going to share here:

  About 15 years ago my doctor diagnosed me with what he characterized as "an endemic depression"...a fancy term for (as he admitted) 'we don't know why it is, but that it may have been there during your whole life, just because of unknown genetics.' Anyway, he put me on Prozac, and advised me that it may take a month or more before the effects (if any) started to kick in. Well, I can distinctly remember that, as I sat there in my chair, white-knuckled, all-of-a-sudden (within 36 hours) a feeling like I'd never had before washed over me, and it was at one and the same time like the lights went on, and the noise stopped. I can remember that like it happened yesterday. However, that effect gradually (after 4 years) wore off.

  With what I've learned about my own biochemical processes since then, I know very well that chemical additives are not a real solution; thus my increasing willingness to try alternative approaches. Kate last night gave me the book The Places That Scare You, and I'm going to spend some time this weekend exploring that with her.
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  poppers

  I'm glad this subject was brought up because anyone who is caught up in their personal story (which is composed of thought) and is struggling will benefit from meditation. Any practice which creates a "distance" from the story/thought will allow one to see the insubstantiality of it - in other words, the story will be seen as just that. Meditation is one way to allow this distance to unfold because it divorces one from their personal story.

  This is important because what meditation does is reveal that what we actually are is something beyond every story - we are the consciousness that witnesses the story that gets repeated in the mind. We are not the mind, which is thought, but the underlying consciousness out of which the mind arises. People for the most part are convinced that they are a "someone" whose stories are actually real. But when that "someone" is searched for that "someone" won't be found - only a story about a someone will be found.

  Sometimes that "story of me" isn't here, isn't present, yet there is a sense of presence/beingness that is obvious - there is the "knowingness" that existence is here. That's what you are under every story, that sense of existence which isn't separate from anything else - that sense of existence is one of utter peace and stillness no matter what the outward circumstances. It is the formless awareness which embraces every thing in the world of form, which includes objects, thoughts, emotions, and sensory input. This is what meditation reveals when practiced for any length of time.
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  JamesThomas

  Deliciously lucid observations, Poppers.

  j
• 

  RAF

  Poppers ... ...